One exemplary general purpose spell-checking program is called ASpell, which is an open-source spelling checker created by Kevin Atkinson. This spelling checker simply checks for valid spellings and provides suggested alternates using a phonetic approximation algorithm. This program is used not only for word processing applications, but can also be used for stenographic spelling correction.
Computer-assisted Transcription (CAT) systems, in comparison, are specific to stenographic shorthand. A CAT program takes stenography that a reporter writes, searches the written characters within a steno-to-text dictionary that the reporter maintains, and places the resulting translated text in a document for later use by others. Stenography uses phonetics instead of spelling for translation into text (e.g., English text). It is known that many variations of a given spoken word exist and that the stenographer can type in any of these variations when trying to capture that spoken word. Because of the existence of the phonetic variations, errors occur often when translating from stenography. Errors arise because the stenographer's dictionary is organized merely as a look-up table; it is not able to make decisions about the typed-in entry, nor is it able to give a best match candidate or a set of best match candidates to the stenographer for use in the translated text.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide a CAT system that is capable of making decisions to improve upon a straight translation from the dictionary.